Listening in Mental Health Clinical Practice.

This article reviews how listening is conceptualized and practiced in mental health clinical settings, based on a scoping review of nineteen peer-reviewed articles from 2000 to 2022. It finds that listening is understood in diverse and sometimes conflicting ways across and within mental health professions, ranging from a therapeutic, virtuous practice to an instrumental tool for information gathering and administrative purposes. The review highlights concerns about the instrumentalization of listening, which can objectify service users and diminish its therapeutic potential, and discusses the ethical importance of cultivating listening as a professional virtue, particularly in social work. It calls for further empirical research to clarify effective listening practices and for social work education to better integrate listening as a core skill to support recovery and uphold professional standards.